‘Work-from-home Google review’ task fraud costs Pune tax consultant Rs 2.72 crore

He was asked to join a Telegram group where the participants were given a task of giving good reviews to businesses on Google.

After sending screenshots of the five reviews, the complainant received Rs 500 in his account.

The complainant was told that the higher level of tasks will be “prepaid”, which means that for a Rs 1,000 given by the complainant as pre-payment and a task performed against it, he will get Rs 1200. And this continued.

However, the returns of the “prepaid tasks” were not deposited into his account directly but were reflecting on a fraudulent platform where the complainant was made to log in, an officer who is part of the probe said.

Lured by the initial small payments, the complainant continued with the scheme, believing the system was genuine.

Investigators said that having been shown small earnings for completing simple online tasks initially, built his trust in the process.

Soon after being moved to higher “prepaid task” categories where he was told to deposit money in advance to unlock bigger returns.

The fraudsters gradually went on increasing the value of these so-called ‘prepaid tasks’ and pushed him into larger transactions over time.

Each new level required higher payments, with the promise of proportionately higher returns.

The complainant kept transferring money as instructed, believing the increasing task values and fake profits shown on the fraudulent platform.

Eventually, when he tried to withdraw the accumulated returns, he was repeatedly stalled with new conditions and demands for further payments. Realising that the promised money was never going to be released, he approached the cyber crime police station of Pune city and lodged a complaint.

Police have begun tracing the mule account network used in the fraud.

Multiple cases of task frauds have been reported in Pune and Pimpri Chinchwad over the last three years.

In the cases of task frauds, the victims initially receive messages offering money for performing tasks such as liking videos online, giving online reviews to businesses such as hotels.

They are initially paid small amounts to win their trust. Later, they are manipulated into doing “higher level” tasks and are asked to pay a fee to receive ‘prepaid tasks’ that will get them higher amounts as returns.

The fraudsters start increasing the fee and while dangling the lure of higher returns and say that these returns are deposited on their app or website based accounts.

Finally, when the promised returns fail to materialise, and the victims realise they are being cheated and the fraudsters vanish online.